Smartphones beating desktops in Olympic search battle

Google has produced data showing that smartphone and tablet usage has increased tenfold during the Olympic games.

The technology giant said these were the first multiscreen Olympics as people search for information whilst watching the action on TV. In its first week, Olympics related searches on mobile devices, which includes smartphones and tablets, were 10 times higher than during the previous week.

Google’s analysis showed that searched for Hey Jude during Paul McCartney’s performance during the opening ceremony surged, with the majority of searches being performed on smartphones. In Europe, searches on desktop computers still vastly outnumbered those on tablets, but in the US it was roughly equal.

In the UK, 46% of Olympic-related internet searches took place on mobile devices during the first two days of the Olympics, compared with 44% in the Netherlands, 30% in Germany and 29% in France.